Senate grills Google on Gmail privacy

Google’s strained relations with Canberra have hit a new low. Labor senator
Doug Cameron
has asked the Attorney-General’s Department to look into whether the practice of electronically scanning Gmail users’ correspondence in order to push advertising breached bugging laws.

On Friday, Senator Cameron used a Senate inquiry into online privacy protections to ask for the legal opinion which, if the practice turns out to be illegal, could have serious consequences for Google’s operations.

“If you post a letter, you would expect that to be private and not opened unless there was a police investigation," he said.

He expressed surprise at the extent of Google’s data digging.

At issue was whether the email scanning software that Google used to extract data in order to target ads on Gmail in effect reads communications, which could be a violation of wiretapping laws.

Greens senator Scott Ludlam used the inquiry to raise the issue with Google executives when they appeared before the Senate committee on Friday morning, labelling the scanning practice “a little bit creepy".

Google representatives stood by the company’s record in defending the privacy rights of its users, and said it would only divulge the content of emails to law enforcement agencies when legally obliged to do so.

But Senator Cameron was unconvinced. “You’re not allowed to fish for law enforcement purposes, but you can actually fish for profit and fish for people who are paying you?"

Related Quotes

Company Profile

These latest questions over the legality of Google’s data harvesting follow an ongoing Australian Federal Police investigation into the search engine company’s potentially criminal collection of private network data from homes and businesses using its Street View vehicles.

Google initially argued that the incident was an accident and only collected fragments of data. But it has subsequently admitted that it collected entire passwords, emails and website addresses.

On Friday morning the Senate inquiry heard from Google Australia’s head of public policy and government affairs, Iarla Flynn, who admitted the vehicles had deliberately scanned for the local network information as they travelled throughout Australian suburbs.

Mr Flynn said that the intention had been to better determine locations and give the images greater context. Sensitive, private information had not been the target of the exercise and that once the mistake had been discovered, all Street View vehicles had been removed from operation, he said.

The director of consultancy Surete Group and former head of the AFP’s high-tech crime centre, Alastair MacGibbon, has asked why the AFP investigation into Google has taken so long – and why its results were not put before Friday’s inquiry.

“I wonder why we were talking about this in May and we are about to hit November and the AFP still doesn’t know whether there was an offence," he said.

“Who was it that knew? Who did it? When did they know about?"

Mr MacGibbon said that the Google executives should have instead faced questions based on the results of the official police inquiry.